Page 58 of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

“Your client isn’t one of those podcasters, are they?” she asked with a sour look.

“Oh, no,” I said, trying not to sound too defensive, “definitely not. I wouldn’t touch one of them with a ten-foot pole, especially after Mo and Molly dragged me, my family, and my boyfriend through the coals just a couple of months ago.”

Rachel nodded with a solemn look. “I know what they did to that poor girl, Magnolia Steele. It seems like she’s been through enough with her father and the serial killer, not to mention her mother’s death.”

I resisted the urge to sneak a glance at Dixie. Rachel didn’t strike me as the type of woman who sat around listening topodcasts. It seemed more likely that she was watching out for anything that had to do with Lila or her relations, given how much she knew about what happened to Magnolia. While it hadn’t been heavily publicized, if she was as secluded as she claimed to be, I doubted she was paying much attention to pop culture.

“As I mentioned,” I said, holding her gaze, “this has nothing to do with a podcast. My client is someone who wants to know what happened to Bethany Brewer.”

I couldn’t help thinking that I’d be more likely to get answers if I told her Magnolia was my client, but that NDA stood in the way. I was legally bound to keep it quiet.

Rachel didn’t respond, so I continued. “I know that you moved to town and became good friends with Bethany’s sister Lila when you were juniors.”

“Well, that’s not quite true,” Rachel said, resting her elbow on the arm of the swing. “Ididmove here from Birmingham our junior year, but we really didn’t become friends until the next summer.”

“Your properties connected, correct?” I asked.

She nodded. “That was before my daddy sold much of the land to pay for the taxes. We cut a path through our land to hers, so it was a lot quicker and easier to get to each other.”

“Before you came to town, Lila and Bethany were best friends. Is that correct?” I asked.

She frowned. “Yes. They’d been best friends since they were small. No one else seemed to want to have anything to do with them.”

“How is it that you became friends with Lila when no one else would?” I asked.

A fire lit up her eyes. “First of all, there was nothing wrong with those girls. People used to say they were touched in the head, but they weren’t. They were just quiet. They were alsoembarrassed that their parents wouldn’t put them in anything except for clothes from the thrift store. But Lila liked to read, and so did I, so we started tradin’ books toward the end of our junior year. We were friendly, but we didn’t see each other outside of school. Until that summer, that is. That summer was when we really got to know each other. Lila, Bethany, and I used to hang out after our chores—well, aftertheirchores. Their parents gave them tons of chores to do durin’ summer break. Mine, not so much,” she said with a shrug. “We went swimmin’ in our stock pond. We read aloud to each other. We explored the woods that used to be at the back part of our property. The three of us were like the three musketeers.”

“So what happened?” I asked. “Because I know that, at some point, Bethany no longer ate lunch with you guys at school during your senior year.”

Her mild expression quickly turned into a scowl. “And just who have you been talking to? Those busybodies that like to gossip at the coffee shop once a week? Or was it Maybelline?”

“It definitely wasn’t Maybelline,” I said. “I don’t want this information getting out, so I’m trying to be as discreet as possible, and Maybelline has a reputation.”

“For runnin’ her mouth,” Rachel grunted. “Or more accurately, spammin’ her Facebook page.” She made a face, looking displeased. “Keep in mind that Lila and I were a couple of years older than Bethany. And on top of that, Bethany had always been a little immature for her age. Part of it was probably caused by her strict upbringin’, but I think part of it was because she wasn’t as smart as everyone else her age. She kind of lived in her own head and was socially awkward. Being held back in elementary school likely didn’t help.”

“So what caused the rift between Bethany and you two?” I asked. “The age difference?”

She nodded. “That and, well, things just became strained between the two sisters. I tried to stay out of it, and I even tried to include Bethany, but something happened between them and they just stopped talkin’.”

“And you don’t know what that was?” Dixie asked. “I find that hard to believe since you and Lila were best friends. Best friends tell each other everything, especially in high school.”

I turned to look at Dixie, guessing that she would know better than I. When I was in high school, I was filmingGotcha!, so I didn’t have any regular friends, let alone best friends, back then. I was pretty isolated, especially since most of the cast and crew members and I didn’t get along. But then again, once I thought about it, Dixie didn’t tell her best friend everything either—having told her nothing about the barn, or about her relationship with Trent Dunbar, the boyfriend she’d been with when the barn fire had started.

But it didn’t matter, because Rachel was squirming in her seat.

“Lila was a pretty private person,” she said. “And she was pretty tough, or at least she liked people to think she was. Her daddy used to beat her, you know?”

“I didn’t know,” I said, but I wasn’t surprised.

“She learned to keep a stiff upper lip and never let people think anything bothered her, but I could see that thingsdidbother her. They bothered her plenty. She just pretended like they didn’t.”

“That still doesn’t explain what happened between the two sisters,” I said. “If they were best friends since Bethany was practically born, that friendship was sixteen years in the making. Something big had to have happened for the two sisters to stop speaking to one another. Especially given that they shared a bedroom.”

“I suppose…” Rachel shifted in her seat again. “If I had to pinpoint a cause, then it would probably be because Lila started to like hanging out with me more than her little sister.”

“But I thought you said the three of you spent time together over the summer,” I said. “Like the three musketeers.”

“Well, thatistrue,” Rachel said, staring down at the wooden planks of the porch floor, “but like I said, Lila loved books and Bethany, well…let’s just say that it was a struggle for her to read. So, Lila and I were reading and discussing books that Bethany didn’t understand, and she felt left out.”

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